ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (81 page)

Chapter 3

Penelope

“Why don’t you go to work and leave me alone?”

Those words stabbed me in the chest almost like JT had wielded an actual knife. Was I really spending too much time at the bakery? Was that why he was becoming so insolent? So disrespectful? Or was there something else going on?

Drugs had crossed my mind a few times, as I’m sure it crosses the mind of most parents of a teenager. But a cursory search of his room didn’t turn up anything. And he had that physical at the beginning of the school year. That would have picked up something, wouldn’t it have?

Nick kept insisting it was just teen angst. But that seemed too easy.

I grabbed his backpack and went to the door, his name on my lips. But Mr. James was standing there, looking quite professional in his jeans and sports coat, a quizzical lilt to his eyebrows that made it pretty clear that he had witnessed at least the explosive last minute of our family dynamics.

Great.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my tone a little sharper than I’d intended.

“I came by to apologize for what I said yesterday. It was…uncalled for.”

That took a little of the wind out of my sails. I wondered if Susan had said something to him. I hadn’t meant to complain to her, but she was the principal of the high school and she had come into the bakery to order some cookies for a staff meeting later in the week…and it felt so good to take a little control of the situation.

“Thank you,” I said curtly. “I appreciate that.”

“You must understand that I’m simply concerned about JT. He is very intelligent and he’s not working up to his potential.”

“Tell me about it.”

I backed up a little, glancing at the soiled plates and trash that filled the living room behind me. It made me tired just to look at it. I was never going to get ahead of all the housework, not with all the time the bakery required of me. JT was no help. And now all of this school stuff…

Mr. James must have taken my movement as an invitation to come into the house because he suddenly towered over me, his expression tight as he scanned the living room.

“It’s not always like this,” I mumbled, dropping JT’s backpack in favor of gathering dishes. “We’ve been busy this week.”

“I’m sure you have been.”

“The bakery…we had five major orders this week. Things aren’t usually as chaotic, but with school starting and kids going off to college and there’s been more weddings this fall than last…we just seem to be busier than usual.”

“The bakery takes a lot of your time.”

“It does. I only have two employees right now because money has been tight. But I’m hoping that’ll change soon and I can hire someone else. Maybe then…”

I stopped, realizing I was making excuses to the same man who had threatened to call child protective services on me. Why was I defending myself to him?

“You have JT first period, right?”

Mr. James studied the living room a moment longer before finally focusing on me. “I do,” he said, his eyes narrowed slightly as they dropped to the dishes in my hands.

“Would you mind taking his bag to him? He forgot it on his way out.”

“Sure.” But he hesitated, his eyes moving over me once again. “Listen,” he said, his tone a little softer than it’d been. “Would you take my card? Maybe I could help you out with JT, hang out with him in the evenings or something? It seems like you need a little help.”

My spine stiffened at the thought. What was he doing? Trying to get more evidence of how I was neglecting my brother? But I took the card, hoping he’d just leave if I did.

He stared at me a minute longer, his eyes softening slightly as they lingered on mine. Then he grabbed the bag and left. I’d never been so happy to see someone’s back in all my life.

I looked around the room, seeing it through a stranger’s eyes, and groaned. If he was really serious about turning me into child protective services, I’d just handed him all the motivation he could possibly need.

~~~

“No one’s going to try to take JT from you.”

I shook my head as I carefully manipulated a cake out of its pan. “You didn’t hear him.”

“But you talked to Susan. And he apologized.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t see the look on his face when he saw the mess at the house. And he probably heard JT and me arguing. I can just imagine what he took from that.”

Nick moved up behind me, trapping me between the work table and the length of his body. He was taller than me, a little on the heavy side, the heat of his body both comforting and suffocating.

“Let me help you,” he said softly.

“How?”

“I could take over the early shift. I could come in at four and start the donuts so that you can be at home with JT.”

“Nick…”

“I know we’ve talked about this before and you feel like it’s your responsibility to handle that part of things. But I used to come in at four with your dad. I know what I’m doing.”

I turned, nearly falling into his arms. Nick has been a part of my life for a long time. He started working at the bakery in high school and was a fixture here. I knew he was capable of taking over the morning shift. It just…it seemed wrong to ask someone else to open the bakery in the middle of the night – to take charge of the most important part of the business while I lay at home asleep.

I studied his dark features, his rounded face and hazel eyes, the five o’clock shadow that was already darkening his jaw at nine o’clock in the morning. I lay my hand in the center of his chest, wishing he’d back off just a little. I knew Nick had ideas about our relationship. He’d asked me out a few times over the last three years, assuming that my negative response had more to do with my circumstances than the fact that he simply wasn’t someone I saw myself dating. That sounded a bit pretentious of me, but it was the truth. If he’d known me when I was in New York, if he’d seen the life I had there, maybe he would understand. But, of course, he hadn’t. And that reality was gone, never to be my reality again.

“Do you really think if I didn’t have to come in so early things would be better with JT?”

“I think it wouldn’t hurt.”

I thought about it for a second, the memory of that teacher’s expression as he stared at our house filling my mind. I had to do something. I had to get my priorities straight.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll try it for a week and see how it goes.”

Nick gripped my upper arms and pulled me closer to him. “I won’t let you down.”

I was afraid for a second he might try to kiss me. And then I’d have to tell him to back off and he’d quit and everything would just fall apart and…

But he didn’t. He just smiled like a child who’d gotten the best present ever for Christmas, then went back to his worktable and hummed under his breath as he decorated a cake for a retirement party.

And I turned back to my own tasks, wondering if I’d just made another in a long list of horrible, devastating mistakes.

~~~

The crowd was already thick when I arrived at the football stadium—or, at least, our small town version of it—friends and neighbors laughing and catching up on the week’s gossip. I found a seat in the center of the stands, waving to customers who stopped their conversations long enough to notice me trying to sneak past them.

I was exhausted. Fridays were always an exceptionally long day. I’d been up since three to open the bakery, worked until an hour ago trying to get orders out and getting a jump start on tomorrow’s orders. I’d wanted to grab a nap before the game, but that didn’t happen. I’d barely had time for a quick shower before it was time to head over. But I never missed one of JT’s games. I might not be the best guardian in the world, but this was important to him, so it was important to me.

I saw him before he saw me. The teacher. He was walking along the bottom of the stands, searching for an open seat. A couple of students called out to him and he stopped to speak to a couple of girls who seemed quite taken with him. Again I wondered how different my high school experience might have been if just one of my teachers had looked like him. But most of my teachers were older women, a couple of middle aged me, most of them still working at the school. It certainly would have been a more interesting experience.

Then he looked up and our eyes met. I almost felt like I was sitting under a spot light, the way he stared at me. I tugged my light sweater tighter around me, unconsciously drawing my bottom lip between my teeth as I dropped my eyes to my toes, my hair falling around my face like a veil. There was something about him that made everything inside of me turn to jelly. The way he was staring at me just made it worse.

I felt like one of those teenagers with a crush on teacher.

“Is this seat open?”

I looked up, the color draining from my face as he towered over me.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

He sat down, a little closer to me than the long, empty bench required. Before I could say something, our football team stepped out onto the field. Everyone stood, cheers rising from all around us. I stood, too, shaking the cowbell with JT’s number on it—35—pride bringing a smile to my face as he ran through the inflatable jackrabbit with the rest of his teammates. We stayed on our feet as both teams gathered in the center of the field for the playing of the National Anthem. And then we settled in for the beginning of the game.

“People take football pretty serious here, don’t they?”

“Don’t they where you’re from?”

He shrugged. “I suppose. But not quite like this.”

I glanced at him. “Where are you from?”

“Oregon.”

My eyebrows rose. “You’re a long way from home. What brought you out here?”

Mr. James looked out on the field for a long minute. “The job market’s a little tight up there. I saw an opportunity to start fresh here and I took it.”

“I guess I understand that.”

“I hear you used to work in New York City.”

“Yeah. A lifetime ago.”

“Did you like it there?”

I thought about my loft apartment, my close knit group of friends, the man I left behind there and a familiar tightness settled in my chest for a long minute.

“Yeah,” I said. “But that was a different life. I was a different person there.”

“I can imagine.”

I studied the field for a minute, watching as our team made a little progress down field. JT made a dive for a pass, but missed, causing the crowd to groan in one, overwhelming voice. But then he redeemed himself with the next play, catching a wild throw and getting the first down.

“He’s pretty good.”

I glanced at Mr. James. “He works hard at it.”

“Too bad he doesn’t put that much effort into his school work.”

“Do you know many teenage boys who put that much effort into school work?”

He actually cracked a smile. And that smile was breathtaking. I had to force myself to look away before I did or said something that would embarrass us both.

“Despite the impression I might have given you, I was not an angel when I was JT’s age. I was something of a nightmare to my parents.”

“Oh?”

“I’m sure my mother could tell you stories that would make you incredibly grateful that sleeping in class is the worst thing JT has ever done.”

“I can’t imagine you were that bad.”

He laughed, the sound like a fine ganache running down the surface of a cake. I liked the sound, wanted to hear more of it. But then the crowd groaned again—another missed pass—and drowned the sound out.

I caught sight of the infinity symbol on the inside of his wrist and touched it before I could stop myself.

“Is this one of your rebellious acts?”

“It is,” he admitted. “My father was a very religious man. He raised my brother, my sister, and myself to believe that altering the body in any way was an insult to God. So, when I was nineteen, I went to New York City with a group of college friends and one of the first things I did was get this tattoo. And this one.” He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and showed me a simple cross on the inside of his other wrist.

“Do they have special meaning to you? Or were they just random choices?”

“This one,” he said, gesturing with the arm that sported the cross, “was a roundabout insult to my father. Though I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I thought it was more to prove to him that you could believe in God and still do whatever you wanted with your own body. And this one,” he stared down at the infinity symbol, a sort of dreamy look coming to his perfect caramel eyes, “was a request of a young woman I met that summer.”

“Hmm, so it was an attempt to get her into your bed. Were you successful?”

“I was,” he admitted, his eyes moving to the football field just as our defense took over.

It wasn’t hard to imagine him romancing some young woman when he was a young man himself. Hell, it wasn’t hard to imagine him doing it now. He seemed like a very charming man who often got what he wanted. And, as stupid as it might sound, I was a little jealous of that young woman who got him to permanently disfigure his body for her. She must have meant a lot to him.